Most wedding couples save their precious wedding day memories into a photo album; which ultimately gets shoved into some bookcase while dust proceeds to grow for a few decades. If it’s lucky, the photo album might leave its bookshelf and be displayed to some friends or relatives for a few brief moments, before being yanked away and placed back into its dust farm. If they’re really lucky (read: they gave the bride a great wedding gift), family and perhaps even some friends may receive smaller wedding albums, depending on what photography package the newlyweds ordered from their wedding photographer.
These situations may seem just a wee bit unusual, but consider how expensive wedding album packages are, and depending on age, how irreplaceable the photo albums can be. Once enough time has passed, the wedding photos may not be replaceable by your photographer. If your wedding was captured with digital cameras, you may have a backup copy of your wedding on a CD somewhere, assuming you can find the CD - and it is intact. Besides your photographer’s captures, other photos might reside in your wedding album. Eventually, the wedding albums become so protected, they become almost legendary, only being seen on special occasions.
Wedding albums are a great keepsake, but why limit your wedding memories to a photo album? Why limit your memories to just your wedding ceremony and reception? Fortunately, there is hope, and a secure way to share your wedding memories with loved ones without resorting to hiring armed guards to protect your precious wedding photo album when it’s out on public display.
Introducing Blurb
Blurb is an online book publishing company founded in 2005. Without having to worry about investing significant amounts of time, knowledge, and money, Blurb is a great solution for anyone that wish to print and publish wedding albums and books.
Blurb BookSmart™
Free Software to Create Bookstore-Quality Books for Mac and PC
To facilitate the creation of books, Blurb developed Blurb BookSmart™. Blurb BookSmart™ is a free application that runs on both PC and Macintosh systems. Blurb BookSmart™ is very easy to use; and is filled with features to help users import their photographs from a variety of media, even other popular online photo resources. Some of Blurb BookSmart™’s features include:
- Photo-layout tools
- Support for custom fonts
- Import photos from Flickr, Picasa, SmugMug, and iPhoto
- Import photos and text from Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, and WordPress
- Editing tools to help proofread your book and adjust images
Recently, Blurb released a very significant update to Blurb BookSmart™, version 1.9. The new version of Blurb BookSmart™ adds many new features requested by users. Some of the new features are especially helpful for couples creating wedding related books:
- New Page Layouts - including classic wedding album layouts
- New Backgrounds, Ornaments, and Photo Borders - couples can add over 60 new accents to their books, including customizable background patterns, ornaments, and image borders
- New Wedding Themes - Four new wedding themes, each theme includes unique backgrounds, ornaments, borders, and colors
- New Script Font - A new script font, which is perfect for wedding related books
- Community Book - Invite family and friends to contribute content for your book
Wedding Book Ideas
Blurb BookSmart™ is flexible and powerful enough to allow your imagination to create any type of book. You can import your photos and assemble more than just a wedding album. If you want to start designing your book, Blurb BookSmart™ includes many text features. You can add text to any page, captions, notes, are just some of the possibilities. There is no reason to have static pictures filling your pages. You can add stories to complement your pictures, helping preserve your wedding memories. Once you have finished designing your wedding album, there are other books you might want to consider designing:
- Wedding Guestbook
- Honeymoon book
- Bridal Party book
- Engagement book
- Bridal Shower book
These are just a few ideas for designing books. Blurb BookSmart™ contains many layouts, themes, ornaments, etc. that are designed with a focus on weddings.
Community Book
Blurb BookSmart™ 1.9 offers a powerful new feature: Community Book. Many users asked Blurb if there was a way to share the experience of creating a book with other people. Blurb responded with Community Book, allowing anyone you choose the ability to upload their photos to Blurb’s web site. Once uploaded, you can access the images directly from Blurb BookSmart™. You can turn your wedding book into a family project simply by sending everyone invitations to contribute to your book. Community Book is a great way of gathering and storing photos from your family and friends in one place.
Design a Book
BookSmart is easy to use, here is a quick overview on how to design your wedding book in just a few steps:
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Choose your book’s dimensions - Choose from four different dimensions; don’t forget to add your title and author!
Pick a Layout - There are many layouts, or just wing it and create your own.
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Import Your Photographs - Import your images from anywhere - your computer, SmugMug, Picasa, etc.
Decide on a Theme - There are many themes you can apply to your book, you can always change it later.
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Design Your Cover - Drop in photos, subtitles, and even customize your book flaps.
Add Pages, Captions, & More Photographs - Create your pages by adding photographs, captions, and stories.
Direct from Blurb: Wedding Album Books Printing Tips
Question: What are some unique ideas wedding couples have come up with using Blurb's Blurb BookSmart™?
Blurb: People have had destination weddings and created Blurb books as giveaways for attending guests with local attractions, things to do, recipes, etc. A nice, personalized gift that helps guests find their way around and do interesting things in the wedding destination.
Brides and grooms have also made very personalized wedding guestbooks for friends and family to sign during the wedding – one recently complete with three generations of family photos from both sides.
One couple made a recipe book for attending guests. Many couples are making honeymoon books. Bridal parties are sharing photos and compiling books for brides that tell their own stories and aren’t created by traditional wedding photographers. Using the cameras left on tables as giveaways, brides are making books from the photos taken by guests.
Question: What are some tips for wedding couples trying to create their own books?
Blurb: Have fun! Tell your own story – do something that’s non-traditional, and that wouldn’t be created by a traditional wedding photographer.
Question: What are some book design mistakes wedding couples tend to encounter and how can they avoid them?
Blurb: Blurb BookSmart™ has been designed to eliminate ‘mistakes’ and help anyone create something that looks professional the first time around. Image sizing mistakes are easily avoided too – Blurb BookSmart™ warns you when an image isn’t sized to look good on the page, so you can zoom in or out as necessary before uploading. Books should be double- and triple-checked before uploading to avoid spelling errors and make sure everything is tight.
>> Continue (Page 2): Blurb and Founder Interview
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